I've been in both worlds since 2002, when I bought my first Mac, a PowerMac G4. I have Windows laptops, too, as my company sells Windows software and I like to eat.

Current personal machine: iMac 27" with a Core i7 and 16GB RAM, purchased in May. Got rid of the second display and now use multiple desktops with my most used applications pinned to certain desktops. I also have an iPhone 4S and an iPad 2 that syncs to it.

Current work machines: Lenovo ThinkPad T510 with a Core i7 M620 processor with 8GB RAM and a Toshiba Satellite with a Core i7 Q740 processor and 8GB RAM.

I'll agree that switching to a Mac and learning the ins and outs of the Mac OS is a non-trivial experience. To this day, I *still* have the occasional troubleshooting exercise where I think to myself that if I didn't have a fair amount of technical acumen (or some really good idea how to troubleshoot a computer or access to the Google) I'd need to rely on someone else.

So the marketing spiel of "it just works" is a bit over-simplified.

However, I've had more of these types of issues with Windows, as well.

I'm pretty much able to choose which machine I want to use while sitting at my desk in my home office. I choose to use my Mac for email, for my calendar, to manage my music, pictures, etc. Even to do general web surfing. I just like the applications and the feel of the Mac better. I like the seamless iCloud synchronization. I like Time Machine -- it just hums along in the background and I've used it to retrieve emails and files I've deleted in error.

The rest of it is just personal preference. As someone who uses both regularly, I know I simply like the Mac better. I like the interface, I like the applications, I like working with the Terminal (and Unix commands) better than I like working from the command prompt in Windows, although that probably means nothing to 99% of the users out there.

My next purchase will be a MacBook Air for travel. If I could figure out a way to keep the MBA and the iMac perfectly synched (with the exception of my media library, which wouldn't fit on a MBA SSD), I'd already have one.

I'd recommend the Apple store -- as a graduate student, there are *always* discounts on Apple stuff. Just go to the higher education part of the Apple website. Let *them* migrate everything they can over to your new machine. It's unlikely I'll ever go back now -- I like using my Macs way too much.